


no lullaby (in this nowhere land)

by voidknight



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Bittersweet, Character Study, Conversations, Enemies to Friends, Existential Angst, Existentialism, Hallucinations, MAG085 Upon the Stair, Mentions of Mental Illness, Other, Reality Bending, The Spiral, canon typical unreality weirdness, i wrote this between midnight and 3am, i'm back on my philosophical romance bullshit, it's also gay but like. i have no idea how i would tag the ship, pre canon and post canon, which appropriately fits the vibe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:34:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24174448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voidknight/pseuds/voidknight
Summary: There is nobody at the top of the staircase, and their anti-presence is stark and frightening. If there had been someone there, Michael might have conceived of them as tall, thin, somehow a bit bent. But, again, there is no one.In which Michael Shelley meets the unknown figure from "Upon the Stair," and somehow they keep running into each other. Or they would, if the latter was there in the first place.
Comments: 15
Kudos: 41





	1. 2009

**Author's Note:**

> i can have little a "naming a fic after an edgy song lyric" rights :)  
> title from "no lullaby" by SIAMÉS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A few days before Sannikov Land, Michael Shelley comes across a strange flight of stairs in the Archives.

Michael Shelley cannot remember if there is supposed to be a staircase connecting the front room of the Archives to the rest of the Institute, which is, perhaps, a sign that he has stayed far too late again. He’s finally pulled himself from the stupor of work, but the 2 AM haze has already laced itself into his bones, a mist in his head, that feverish prickling skin that reacts a little too harshly to the draught. If he’s now starting to hallucinate then that is a bad sign indeed.

It’s important to get a good few nights of rest before travelling—he  _ knows _ that. And this trip is more important than any he will ever go on again. Yet the hours slip by as he stubbornly refuses to leave, and, consequently, sleep still eludes him.

Michael places his laptop bag on the vacant front desk and blinks a couple times, walking across the room to view the staircase from a different angle. It swims in his vision, but nevertheless persists. Like it is toying with him somehow. Daring him to believe in its reality despite its clear illusory nature.

He finds that he cannot quite tell where the floor stops, where the hallway outside starts. Where the door is. How far up does the staircase go? Surely it must connect to something.

“Hello?” he calls into the nothingness for no reason at all.

Nobody responds, and he feels that—that absence of a presence—much too strongly. It makes the hairs on his arms prick up. A dull pain throbs just behind his eyes, and the first notes of what might be panic—drawn from a deep reservoir of experience with the  _ impossible _ —begin to play in his mind.

Everything else in the room is in order. He makes an inventory. One messy desk. Three chairs in a row at the front, the ones that nobody ever uses. The bookcase. The filing cabinet. The wilting flower in a pot on top of it. He does not know what kind of flower it is. It is pink and its petals are fat and rounded.

And Michael cannot leave because something is blocking his way.

There is nobody at the top of the staircase, and their anti-presence is stark and frightening. If there had been someone there, Michael might have conceived of them as tall, thin, somehow a bit  _ bent. _ But, again, there is no one.

And there is only silence when they don’t open their mouth or say,  _ i’m sorry for the intrusion. were you leaving? _

“Yes,” Michael stammers, quietly but still out loud. A sort of puzzled smile flashes across his face when he realizes he is talking to himself.

_ this isn’t a staircase, _ says the not-figure,  _ but i thought i might share my absence with you before you left. funny, that. that it is easier to not be on a real staircase than not be on a false one. _

“Are you, um, are you here to give a statement?”

It’s the only way he can think to respond to something like that—which is silly, of course, because there is nothing for him to respond to.

_ no, i gave my statement long ago. or was it just yesterday? hmm, i don’t suppose it matters. _

“What do you want?”

_ that’s a good question. i’m not sure i’m quite real enough to  _ want _ anything anymore. but i think i would want you to come up the staircase, if it were real. it’s strange, though. there’s more instinct to me than substance, and instinctively i might say you’d be the perfect wanderer. and yet i doubt i’m going to have much luck reaching you. do you know why that is? _

“Maybe because I know better than to climb up a phantom staircase.” He tries to inject a bit of artificial smugness into his voice. It comes out sounding more fearful than before.

_ do you? _

Michael turns on his heels and retreats back to the Head Archivist’s office, hoping against hope that maybe Gertrude is attempting another one of her sleepless nights in the Archives, but no, it’s just him. He returns to the empty room, where the figure is still not standing upon the stairs that are distinctly unreal.

Belatedly, he realizes the nature of that which he does not see before him.

“You’re of the Spiral.”

_ am i? _

“Yes—yes, you’re not real, but you  _ are, _ and you’re playing with my perceptions. That’s what it does.” He breathes a sigh of relief that he doesn’t quite feel. “Right. Brilliant. Just in time.”

The nothingness above the top stair curves itself into a smile.  _ in time for what? _

“The—your Great Twisting.”

_ hmm. _

“Is this your way of trying to—to—to get me out of the equation before we leave? Scared of what we could do to you?”

_ what  _ could _ you do to me? _

“When we disrupt the ritual, all the things like  _ you _ —you’ll all be destroyed.”

It’s not exactly true—at the very least it’s an oversimplification—but Michael would like to believe that it is. That maybe there is some revenge to be had on those who took his best friend. That the entity that touched him wasn’t perhaps the least corporeal of the bunch.

The silence sounds a lot like laughter.

_ how does one destroy that which does not exist? _

“She’ll find a way.”

_ but nothing is ever truly destroyed. it is only transformed. _

Michael desperately wishes that he were not as afraid as he is.

“Were you something, before you were… not?”

_ yes. i was a person, like you. _

“Do you remember it?”

_ it is difficult. _

“Do you want to?”

_ not anymore. _

“Does  _ anyone _ remember?”

_ no. they have all forgotten. _

Because that’s how it works, isn’t it. It takes you, and you vanish from everything. From life, from collective memory, from reality.

_ does that scare you? the idea of being nothing to anyone? _

“Why wouldn’t it?”

There is no response. But there wouldn’t have been one anyways, even if the figure  _ had _ spoken.

Michael Shelley has always been fairly sure that he knows how he is going to die. Well, not  _ how _ exactly, but he is certain that one day, he will go mad, and that will be the end of that. His mind will begin to fracture and he will cut himself on the edges. It’s a wonder he’s escaped madness so far, though his general anxiety and the host of various mental conditions he’s collected over the years have pulled him close to the edge once or twice. The question of where that edge really is—the breaking point, the  _ threshold _ at which his mind is simply not the same—is much harder to answer. Michael assumes he will only know once he reaches it.

However, while  _ perceiving _ the unreal is one thing (and ultimately a harmless thing, as he has tried to tell himself many times), it is quite another to  _ be _ the unreal. The first he can accept. If he is doomed to scrawl fractals on the walls of his flat like the father of Ivo Lensik, so be it. But if he were to slip out of reality himself—climb too far up the staircase—then what would all his accomplishments count for? The work he’s done? The care and comfort and  _ help _ he’s given to Gertrude?

Michael fixes his eyes on the blank space where the door should be. He knows better than to tell the figure to go away.

_ if i were one to deal in absolutes, _ they do not say,  _ i would tell you that there are three options ahead of you. you could continue to stare at nothing. or, you could pass through me and be on your way—because i am not here, and cannot stop you, though you may want to believe i can. or you could join me on the staircase. perhaps it could be real enough to support your weight for a little while, until we climb so far that that no longer matters. you might even find yourself becoming me. _

Michael says nothing. It seems impossible that exit could be so easy. And yet he knows that nothing is trapping him here but his own mind.

_ i’m not sure if that  _ becoming _ would be a horror or a relief. for me, that is. i know exactly how it would be for you. _

“You’re, um, not doing a very good job of convincing me.”

_oh._ If there were anything genuine about them they might sound genuinely surprised.  _ i do not usually share this much. there is something about this place that makes it difficult to reel it all in. _

Michael knows that all too well.

Somewhere in the distance, in the darkness of the Archives, a door creaks. It’s just the old building settling itself, but it still makes Michael jump.

When he turns back, the room that he is standing in leads into the hallway, no flight of stairs needed to cross from one to the other. There is simply a doorway. There was never anyone in here with him, and he can no longer feel their pressing absence.

A shudder runs through him, but when he walks across the room and crosses the threshold, breath held, nothing has changed. He is still himself.

He leaves the Institute quietly, and locks all the doors on the way out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> edit: funnily enough, the new episode (mag167) actually confirms that michael shelley would not have known about the entities - so i guess some part of this is unrealistic/noncanon lol  
> what a coincidence!


	2. 2016

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is a staircase in the Distortion.

To say that Michael _travels_ through the corridors of the Distortion would be a gross misrepresentation. _Travel_ implies a fixed point A and a fixed point B, and the Distortion has never had either. _Travel_ implies a separation between the being that is moving and the space that they are moving through, and, again, the Distortion feels no need to make that kind of distinction.

The hallways branch endlessly, spiralling, impossible to describe or chart (or so one would think). Michael can feel the presence (or absence) of each one, and it does not bother him that the ways in which they connect (or don’t connect) make no sense. No, more than simply _not bothering him—_ he _delights_ in his own unknowable geometry. There is something sublime about it. About existing as more of a location than a person.

Of course, the fact that he is part-person at all is… regrettable. But at least he still has patterns to fall back into.

Countless wanderers dot the halls in various stages of digestion. Their fear peaks when they first arrive, desperately trying to warp their perception of their experience to fit into a framework they can understand. Invariably, they fail, and that failure is sharp and sweet, like a sour fruit.

After that, who’s to say what will happen to them. Sometimes Michael lets them leave. The memory will curdle in their minds and they will forget how to trust reality, how to distinguish truth from lies, how to tell if that door really _was_ there a second ago—and the Spiral will be pleased, as much as it can be. Michael, at least, will be pleased.

And others will wander until there is no longer any distinction between their shoes and the floorboards, and their lack of a scream will reverberate in Michael’s head, and he will relish it.

Helen Richardson has been in here a while, and she is beginning to forget how to be a person. He’s happy for her. That sort of shedding is never pleasant, but oh, it is _freeing._

There are no stairs in the Distortion, but that statement is about as true as anything else about the place. There can be stairs if there want to be. A staircase is no different than a door, after all—both lead to some other place, another room, another level, another twist in this spiralling dimensional mess.

Which is why Michael is not surprised when, one day, as he does not travel the lengths of his own corkscrew architecture, there _are_ stairs, branching off from a central point in one of the corridors.

He assumes at first that the figure at the top of these stairs is what remains of a far gone wanderer, but when he looks closer he realizes that there is no one there at all. And then, a second later, he recognizes that nothingness with a start.

Impossibility is one thing that Michael can see very clearly, and though there is no one on the stairs, he finds that he can get a feeling for what they might look like. They are tall, but not as tall as Michael Shelley. Their face is square and their features are soft, frozen in an expressionless glance. If he twists his mind far enough, enough to reach a world in which gender exists, he might categorize the figure’s lack of appearance as masculine. Fortunately, gender is one lie from which they have both been liberated, and the thought barely crosses Michael’s mind.

“Are you trying to steal my wanderers, Nowhere Man?” He knows they have no name—and would never desire to force one on them—but he _does_ enjoy addressing people by title, and hopes that this might make the figure a little uncomfortable, as much as they can be.

 _interesting,_ they say, with no voice, no words, no language. _i feel… no, i don’t feel any more_ real _than i was. but i feel more in sync with the world, here._

“Because you are not in the world.”

_it makes sense that i would be most comfortable in my own domain._

“ _My_ domain,” Michael corrects, though it isn’t _quite_ true. No matter—half-truths are his specialty as a being of permanently partial identity. “You have plenty to take up your staircase back in the real world. No point in scavenging through those who have already chosen to take the wrong door.”

_we’re on the same side. there’s no need to kick me out just yet._

“Then why are you here?”

Oh, how wonderfully ironic it is, attempting to pry a straight answer from one just as twisted as him. Michael knows there is no straight answer, and likes it better that way.

_did one part of your identity used to belong to a young man working at the magnus archives?_

“Yes.” The question is not what he expected, but he’ll go with it. “He met you—or would have, if there was anything of you to _meet._ ”

The figure smiles at the acknowledgement of their unreality. _it appears he didn’t manage to destroy me like he promised._

“Oh, he destroyed quite a lot, especially for someone so naive.”

_a pity._

“More than a _pity._ But how would you know?” He doesn’t know why he’s being so hostile, but continues anyway, with no breaks in his smooth, even voice. “You have never tried to be something greater than you are, only for your transcendence to be stripped from you.”

_why would i want that? what could i even become that is greater than what i am? i am not here; i do not exist. haven’t i achieved the apotheosis of impossibility? the antithesis of platonic form?_

“I envy you,” says Michael. Not certain whether or not it is a lie.

_what of me is there to envy?_

“You accept your simple purpose so readily.”

_unlike you, who wastes time dreaming of what could have been?_

Michael does not want to hear the truth right now, but he bears it, keeps his mouth shut.

_we both feed, we both confuse, we both exist as paradoxes. are you stuck on your failed transcendence or the loss of your personhood?_

He laughs, almost despite himself. “Are you asking me to choose between the regrets of the _Distortion_ and the regrets of _Michael?_ ”

_i am pointing out what i have observed._

“Careful there. Don’t _observe_ too much or else you might start to _behold._ ”

The figure either does not get his joke or does not find it funny.

“Perhaps I envy your transition. You were, and then, gradually, you were not. You switched places with the one who tempted you up the stairs, and you continued in his role. There was no—no _violence,_ no forcing of square pegs into round holes.”

_if you think i went painlessly then you are much mistaken._

“But you continued a cycle as it was meant to be.” He laughs, and the sound is as strained as it is cascading. “The Distortion is not meant to have a name, a face. To be bound to something as real as… _Michael._ ”

_shouldn’t you revel in the inherent contradictions of your being? real and unreal, person and place?_

He wants to respond with _I do,_ but instead he goes with: “That’s easy for you to say. You’re not here—fully unreal.”

_do you want to be fully unreal?_

“I don’t want to be Michael.”

_michael was scared of leaving behind his personhood. his connections._

“So were you, I imagine. That doesn’t mean anything. I am not Michael Shelley; I am glad to be free of all that nonsense.”

Like half the things he tells himself, it’s a lie—or at the very least a point of hypocrisy. If he were truly free then he would not still feel the bitter pang of betrayal that rises up in somewhere that is not his stomach, the clawing desire for revenge, even though Gertrude is dead, even though he has no real attachment to the Archives or its Archivist.

 _what would happen,_ says the figure who is not there, _if i were to take you up this staircase?_

“Your staircase is inside of me. I couldn’t travel up it, not in the way you require.”

_anything is possible._

Michael supposes that is technically true.

“Won’t you be off, Nowhere Man?” he says instead. “I have doors to open and you have staircases to travel.”

The figure grins. _that came very close to telling me to go away._

“Oh, come now.” As Michael smiles back, the mirrors in the hallway all reflect the expression, warped and distorted. “You know that won’t work on me.”

_it was worth a shot._

And as the staircase fades back into the wall, and the hallway’s silence is no longer quite so magnified, Michael wonders if the figure will be gracing him with their absence again. And he wonders if they got what they wanted.


	3. 2017

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Michael isn't dead, but he isn't quite alive, either.
> 
> Set post-MAG101, Another Twist

Michael does not have a lot of practice being nowhere at all. Or being  _ nothing _ at all, for that matter. He has always been  _ something, _ and for a good deal of what might generously be counted as his existence, he was  _ too much _ of something. And now he has simply ceased to exist.

It makes sense, in a weird, Spiralling way, that a paradox would fail to destroy him. The first time he was torn apart, it was because he entered a door. How poetic that he should be unmade again by doing the exact same thing.

He thinks he would like to talk to the entity that was once Helen Richardson and is now the Distortion. She’s been entangling herself in the place, interweaving the fabric of her being with the twisting corridors, much like he once did. Wearing down the path, cloaking herself in the wallpaper. And when she finally found her door, it would not be the way out—it would be her own threshold of becoming, the final step in her transformation.

Michael wants to be proud of her. Either that, or angry with her. He  _ should _ be, he thinks, as he desperately clings to the echoes of what it felt like to be the Distortion. Except he isn’t. It feels like he has imploded, like he is a ripped-out tumor, a failed transplant, like every inch of his not-skin is bleeding out the remnants of his reality. He’s not even certain he’s thinking anymore—if he had a head it would be swimming—because he is not sure he knows what it feels like to  _ think, _ to be an individual, to have a consciousness that is not intrinsically entwined with the unknowable will of Fear itself. To go from something so vast, so winding, so  _ present _ even in its impossibility—and then be reduced to the tiniest scrap of something he might once have been.

And this continues for some time—or it would, if time were real for Michael.

Then he has feet, but not real ones. He can tell because they are pressing against something hard. He is standing. And he has hands, with the regular amount of fingers, and he can tell because he feels the soft flesh of someone else’s hands in his own. As present as a dream, real as a hallucination, and yet he  _ can _ feel it because there is nothing else to feel.

“I’ve got you,” says a voice that he wants to believe is there.

“Are you real?”

It’s a very stupid question, but it’s what comes to mind.

“No,” they reply, “and neither are you.”

Something in front of him resolves itself into a face. Small, thin mouth, gently curving nose, long eyelashes. He can dream up more detail this time, now that they’re standing parallel, on the same plane.

“I’m Michael,” he says, even though it isn’t true. He’s always been one for clinging too long to memories.

“I know,” says the Nowhere Man.

“Where are we?”

“Upon the stair. Where else?”

“Which stair?”

“Does it matter?”

Michael can see it now—the curves and angles of a spiral staircase, dipping down into oblivion. It’s made of no wood that exists, but he finds himself following the dark whorls in the shiny mahogany steps, the gentle slope of the banister.

“What will happen if I go down it?”

“That isn’t our job.”

“Our?”

“Besides. To  _ travel _ up a staircase, you must have a fixed point A and a fixed point B—and I have never had either, because I am the in-between, the liminal space between storeys. It’s a silly distinction to make, between me and my staircase, between you and your door.”

“I went through my door, and now I’m here.”

They consider this. “Cross an impossible threshold and you enter into an impossible place.”

“What if one of your wanderers were to tempt  _ you _ up the staircase?”

“I don’t think it works like that.”

“I didn’t think the Distortion could hold a fragment of an identity, but here we are.”

The two of them haven’t been speaking, not really, but somehow a silence settles over them. It is the default state of things. Michael’s new companion has not let go of his hands, and he’s grateful for that—if they did, he might drift off into a greater state of intangibility, of unknowing. That something that is not there could serve as an anchor is absurd. But the absurd is now what dictates Michael’s fate, and he has accepted it. Embraced it, even.

“Is this better?” says the figure. Michael should stop thinking of them like that—they’re more than that, a face and hands and close-cropped dark hair and a coat that would be a little too big for them if they were alive and able to wear it.

“Than what?”

“Than your contradictory half-existence. Than being the Distortion.”

“No,” Michael replies, truthfully.

“Hmm. You seemed to like the thought of being unreal.”

“No—I—” It is hard to wrap his mind around these things now, now that that experience is no longer his reality. “I wanted to be the Distortion without being Michael, and now I am Michael without being the Distortion.”

“ _ Are _ you Michael?”

“I remember being him.”

“Do you also remember being the young man in the Archives?”

It seems like lifetimes away, worlds away, but he nods. Pained.

“It’s easier to forget,” says the Nowhere Man, sympathetically.

“Do you think everyone will forget  _ me? _ ”

“No, I don’t think so.”

Michael shudders, or at least thinks very hard about making his incorporeal body do so. “Somehow, that’s harder to stomach than if they did.”

“Because then you have people to miss you.”

Who even would miss him? Helen wouldn’t. The Archivist wouldn’t. Elias wouldn’t. The young lady with the round glasses who was taken by an aspect of the Stranger—she might’ve, were she still alive. And Gertrude is dead (good riddance), and Eric is dead, and Emma, and Sarah.

“He was so afraid of being, well,  _ nothing.” _ He can’t bring himself to say  _ I. _

“I remember.”

“Do you think there’s any way to shed the last vestiges of my identity? If I stay here with you, will I become like you?”

“Who’s to say? Anything is possible.”

Michael pauses before asking, “Will I be happy?”

“It depends what you’re looking for.”

“Are you happy?”

“I’m doing what I must. There’s a sort of joy in that.”

“In having a simple purpose.”

“I suppose so.”

The stairs are long and dark and winding. Michael cannot see a bottom. He doubts there is one. But maybe if he stays here long enough, there will come a person, a real person, who stares at him like he is a hallucination, will follow him up the impossible staircase, will call out to him as his friend once did to an empty house.

“What if I left?” he asks.

“Where would you go?”

“I don’t know. Away. Oblivion, maybe.”

“I would miss you,” says the figure softly.

“You would?”

“As much as there is something of you to  _ miss. _ ”

“Oh.”

That makes one person. But then again, they can’t exactly be counted as a person, can they.

“Do you get lonely?”

They laugh. “I think that only real people can get lonely.”

The conversation stops again for a minute, for an hour, for an indeterminate time. At least standing so straight and so still doesn’t make his feet hurt; he has no feet with which to feel that phantom pain.

Michael has one more question.

“Do you think you’ll ever be able to trade places with someone?”

“And become real.”

“Yeah. Would you want to?”

“I’m not sure. There’s always the possibility that I’ve been unreal for long enough that I’d be dead in the real world—like what happened to my predecessor. If a chance came up, I’d take it, but…”

“You’ve stopped hoping.”

“Maybe. And I like it here. But it isn’t too late for you.”

Michael finds himself laughing too, and immediately misses the echo it had back in the hallways. “You think I could return to reality? I don’t think I even have a  _ body. _ If I do, it’s back in Sannikov Land, or maybe lying behind some door in the Distortion.”

“Would you want to go back?”

“I—don’t know.”

The Nowhere Man nods, understanding. “It’s alright. You have a long time to decide.”

“Right. Okay.” He sighs—an ancient instinct—and attempts a smile. “Thank you.”

“No problem,” they reply, and their own smile is realer than ever.


	4. epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They're stranded together.

Time slips away so fast, here—it pours through Michael’s incorporeal fingers like water, like a flailing fish, squirming around and trying to leap away. At least, as the Distortion, he could tell the time by the progression of the sun in the outside world. But now there is no sun, and no outside world, only the few glances that they are afforded as they stand in the in-between.

Maybe he should be bored. Maybe he  _ would _ be bored if his state didn’t feel like a neverending dream. If there was no one else here with him. If their surroundings weren’t constantly in flux.

It’s not difficult to get people to come up the stairs. It’s no different than presenting them with a door that shouldn’t be there and daring them to open it. Enticed by the mystery, by the sheer  _ wrongness, _ they turn themselves into victims. This is familiar. This is what Michael is used to. And that’s nice.

If only it didn’t feel like he was staring through a screen, a locked window into a place that he can never visit. The wanderers will climb and climb and they will never be able to reach the two figures who are not standing upon the stair. As much as they might try. Some reach out desperate, clawing hands—some to embrace, some to strangle. Michael learns not to instinctively lean away. They will never be able to touch him, after all.

It’s a shame. He thinks he would like to be touched.

The conversations they have with the wanderers are never substantial. Not like how Michael Shelley once conversed with an unknown figure. Michael thinks they need to pick better targets—he longs for another dialogue of twisting words, of threats and flirts and wonderful confusion.

The glimpse into other buildings, other architecture, is nice, at least. The stairs that they do not stand on are always different. Some are perfectly straight; some bend or spiral. Made of wood, stone, plastic, glass. Half-baked rooms form echoes at the feet of the stairs, half-visible, half-rendered. Michael loves to watch these rooms, gather a sense of their inhabitants though what objects he can see. A fireplace. A tennis racket propped up beside a door. A vase of wilted flowers on the metal wireframe table. Three stuffed bears on the faux-leather sofa.

Most wanderers reach their destinations eventually. But they have still been marked. And maybe the lurkers of the stairs will come back for more.

One stairway has a clock on the balcony. Its hands are stopped at 3:49 AM. It does not move, and it moves even less when the owner of this house—a young woman, timid and sleep-deprived—begins her journey up the stairs.

There’s plenty of time in between trips to real houses, or at least Michael assumes there is. He certainly spends a lot of time not in houses. That being said, he never really  _ is _ in houses anyway, but he likes to think that he is. But they can’t find a new wanderer every night, can’t gobble up everyone who crosses into their domain. They have to be strategic. Pick targets who would fear an unknown anti-presence. Or two of them.

It occurs to him, once, that he has been standing since he got here, and yet his feet do not ache, and he feels nothing by way of pain or hunger or exhaustion.

“I think I’m going to sit down,” he says, though he doesn’t need to.

His companion looks at him like they never considered this. “If you wish.”

Michael sits on the top stair, leaning against the railing that connects the bannister to the balcony. It’s no real relief. He doesn’t feel any different, except for that he’s seated, and the slight chill of the stair seeps onto his thighs. It’s remarkable how little energy it took to continue standing.

“Join me?” he requests.

The Nowhere Man lowers themself down beside him, their eyes fixed on the lowest visible stair. They do not speak. They rarely do.

Michael is suddenly reminded of a scene from his childhood. He is 17 years old and he and his best friend Ryan are sitting at the top of the stairs in Ryan’s house. It is midnight, and the whole house is dark. Ryan is crying. Michael doesn’t remember why—the aftermath of a psychotic episode, perhaps, or simply a panic attack—but he remembers holding him, squeezing his shoulders, an anchor to reality.

“I miss being real,” he says into the quiet emptiness of the stairwell.

“Do you?”

“Some parts of it. I miss… I miss  _ connection, _ is what I miss. Being something to someone.”

“Just like Michael Shelley.”

Michael grimaces. “Do you think I’m becoming him again?”

“No. But you’re clearly plagued with memories, tempting you back towards reality.”

He hates himself for letting thoughts like this worm their way back into his brain and fester in there, playing on repeat the highs and lows of being a person. He doesn’t want to be a person again. Except—except maybe he does.

“Do you think I’m weak?” he asks. “For letting these sorts of feelings contaminate me.”

“Of course not.”

“But you think I’ll accept my unreality eventually.”

“It’ll hurt less if you do.”

He was so ready to do so when he arrived here—so ready to forget. But he remembers what friendship felt like, and he remembers the feeling of warm skin under his fingers, and he remembers what it was like to be the recipient of a genuine,  _ alive _ smile. It twists his insides up in a different way than it feels to behold someone who is scared for their sanity.

He finds himself slipping his hand into his companion’s, and they close their fingers around his own.

“You really don’t remember anything about—about your life before.”

“I was a person,” they reply. “I was a man and I lived in a house with a staircase.”

“And you don’t want to remember more.”

“Why would I need to? To bind myself to the past?”

Michael destroyed himself by being too bound to the past, too hungry for revenge that he didn’t deserve. He has no answers, no justification for this silly obsession with memory.

The figure suddenly shifts closer towards him until their knee bumps against his, and leans in, a tiny smile on their lips. “Who do  _ you _ think I was?”

“What?”

“We could pretend. I could create a past for myself. It wouldn’t be real, but—neither is a story. And stories are wonderful things.”

“All right,” says Michael slowly. “I—I’m good at stories.”

It’s the truth. He’s always been better at stories than real life, and often he’s been told that in an accusatory way, someone trying to point out how he always has his head up in the clouds, puzzling over things that don’t matter.

He rests his head in between two smooth balusters and thinks.

“Your name was, um—Henry.” It’s generic enough, but it’s got personality. “And you were just about to turn 28 when you stopped being real.” Just like he was. “And you lived alone in a two-storey house, and you were always worried about being able to pay the rent, because you quite liked the house but your job didn’t pay that much.”

“What was my job?”

“You were an editor for the local newspaper, but you wanted to be a poet. You didn’t like writing about current events, or politics, or anything of the sort. You wanted to write about little things. Like—your neighbors got a new cat. A bakery opened across the street, and sometimes you could smell the freshly cooked bread from the window.”

“Did I have any friends?”

“Not many. You kept in touch with some of your closer buddies from college. And you’d been meaning to talk more to the nice woman who sold flowers in the park.”

“There was a park?”

“Yes. It was huge, and green. They only cut the grass in one area, so most of it felt like a vast grassland. You liked to take walks there.”

He pauses, watching his companion, whose fingers are still entwined in his. Does their coat tell him anything about them? It’s dark brown, a little shabby, of indeterminate age. What about their voice? Soft, reserved, with a standard RP accent. It makes them feel smaller than they are. Draws them further away from the possibility of having any sort of presence.

They sure feel like they have a presence—they have enough of a presence to have an effect on Michael, in some sort of way. The two of them are on the same wavelength, now, and he can see them for who they are. Or aren’t.

“What did other people think of me?” asks the figure.

“They always thought you were very kind. Quiet, but—but with a good energy to you. You had a good relationship with your parents, though they didn’t always  _ understand _ you. And when you did have friendships—or even romances—they were deep and fulfilling, for the most part.”

Is he just projecting? He can make this person into anything he wants; why not pile onto them a list of things he wished were true about himself? No, they’re already true—he  _ knows _ people thought he was kind. He knows he had some great friendships. There isn’t anything to wish for here. But maybe he would have been better off if someone had told  _ him _ all of this, before.

“I think,” he continues, wetting his lips, “that you would have been a wonderful person to live with.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

The figure’s light eyes sweep Michael’s body, and he realizes that he is just as visible to them as they are to him. It’s strange to think that no one else could ever really perceive him. Whether the two of them can even truly perceive each other is still up in the air. But why shouldn’t they? Even dreams can feel like reality.

“Did I have any lovers?” they ask.

Michael realizes that their whole side is pressed up against him now—he’s pinned between their body and the balusters. He straightens up, looks at them.

“A few.”

“What were they like?”

“They were—nice.”

“What did we do together?”

“You liked to talk. Tell each other stories.”

“Would I miss them?”

“You were single by the time you faded away. But of course, you wouldn’t remember them now.”

“Of course not,” says the Nowhere Man. “Because I have no connections. No one to miss.”

“You said you would miss me if I left.”

“I would.”

“Do you think it’s possible to love someone who isn’t real?”

“Yes,” they reply without missing a beat, “because love isn’t quite real, either, is it? It’s a story. A child doesn’t love their imaginary friend any less just because it isn’t there.”

“Could an imaginary person have an imaginary friend?”

“I think so, yes.”

Michael doesn’t know what he wants in this moment—he has no body to tell him what he wants, no fluttering heartbeat, no warm cheeks—but he reaches up his left hand and touches his companion’s face. Tries to  _ feel _ it. Imagines its smoothness is not just texturelessness. Imagines he can see himself in their eyes, and that he doesn’t look like a ghost. Imagines that they’re breathing, that their breath smells like something.

Imagines that they have a mouth with which to kiss him, and when they do—slowly, gently, uncertainly—he doesn’t have to pretend to feel it. It’s better than all his other dream kisses, that’s for sure. Not that he’s had many of those. One of his companion’s hands is still holding his; the other rests at the back of his neck, pulling him towards them, away from the baluster.

Michael doesn’t stop kissing them because if he did he’d have to say something afterwards, and he doesn’t know how he could justify this. A gesture so firmly rooted in reality. In desire. Desire for what? Their body, which they do not have? Just a touch? A connection?

They swing a leg over Michael’s and pull themself into his lap. They’re a pressure on his thighs, a weight, a gravity. Something tangible and  _ there, _ and yet only there in his own mind, only perceptible to him. He wishes he remembered how to taste so he could know more than just the fact that they don’t taste like anything at all.

He wonders what sort of story they’re constructing in their own head right now. Maybe it’s a proper love story. An alternate universe in which they met under different circumstances, were able to pursue some sort of  _ real _ romance, whatever that means. Were able to do so much more than kiss at the top of a stairwell they can never leave. Then again—if they were both real, if they had met in any other place at any other time in any other situation, this would not have happened.

After the figure pulls away, they tuck their face into the crook of Michael’s neck and lie there, leaning on him, for quite some time.

What comes now? Some emotional discussion? A declaration of love? It wouldn’t be right. Because they are victims of circumstance, and though fate has bound them tightly together—bound so tight they begin to make sparks—in a way they’re little more than strangers.

“Glad I met you,” murmurs the Nowhere Man, and it’s all they need to say.

If this was reality, they would hold each other until they fell asleep, but this is not reality and they are basically already dreaming. So they just lay against the balusters and pretend that they’re real lovers, or something like that.

The only thing that tells the time here is the hunger of the Spiral, and eventually, they pick themselves up and get back to their search for wanderers to take up the winding staircase.

And Michael was so sure that he wanted to be rid of reality, and then he was so sure he wanted to return to it, and now he is not so sure about anything. Is there a way to pull both of them out of this nowhere land and survive the impact? Would he even want to know his companion in real life? Because, when it comes down to it, the Nowhere Man is inseparable from the staircase, as Michael the Distortion was inseparable from his door—and he knows all too well how much he changed when he was no longer the door anymore.

But for now, they’re here, and they’re here together. So why not make the most of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! this was fun to write and think about - upon the stair is one of my favorite episodes, so i'm glad i was able to pay tribute to it somehow :0


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